Summertime, and the Eatin’ Is Easy

The time for eating local and healthy and deliciously — without even cooking, if you don’t feel like it — is upon us

Eating-wise, for a large part of North America this time of year, is as good as it as it gets — in fact, you could say it’s ideal. Tomatoes, corn, and basil are the symbols, but we’re currently also getting fresh garlic, green onions, juicy cabbage, beets, new-ish potatoes, eggplant, summer squash, beans galore, kohlrabi, stone fruit … and that’s just a partial list. All of this is so much better than these same crops are when they’re imported from other regions or countries (for some reason, the beans seem especially so, but tomatoes, corn … ) that it’s worth celebrating, and being grateful. The season is so loaded with opportunity that you can understand how our ancestors spent many long hours laboring to preserve as much of this harvest as possible — a tradition that some of us still follow.

The bounty is almost overwhelming, but I make an effort to cook through it all. (I freeze tomatoes, as I’ve written about too many times.) Being a CSA member helps: we get plenty of produce, but it’s rarely an overwhelming amount, and there’s not the kind of pressure gardeners feel, as they do when a crop comes in all at once (cucumbers are famous for that, hence the omnipresence of jarred pickles). So I just try to cook every day, and twice if there’s time.